BANGOR, Maine — Storm-related damage to an important piece of electrical equipment on Congress Street forced Bangor Hydro Electric Co. to shut down power to 36 customers, the largest of which was St. Joseph Hospital, for an hour Tuesday.

A crossarm, a horizontal bar used for wires and cables, was burning due to storm damage, but aid from the fire department was not required.

“It sounds a lot worse than it actually is,” Bangor Hydro spokeswoman Susan Faloon said. “We could fix it now or have a much longer outage if we left it, so we wanted to do it now.”

While some hallways in St. Joseph were noticeably darkened and nonessential outlets carried no current for a time, the hospital was not without electricity as it ran all essential systems on auxiliary power during the planned outage.

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Affected customers, which also included the Broadway Coffee Shop, were notified in advance. Electricity was turned off for a little less than an hour before being restored at 12:02 p.m.